PayPal Holdings Inc. is rolling out a stablecoin, the first by a large financial company and a potentially significant boost to the sluggish adoption of digital tokens for payments.
PayPal USD (PYUSD) is issued by Paxos Trust Co. and fully backed by US dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries and similar cash equivalents, the San Jose, California-based payments company said on Monday. It’s pegged to the dollar and will be gradually available to PayPal’s customers in the US.
With PYUSD, Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman is seeking to cement PayPal’s dominance in digital payments by leaning on technology that enables instant and lower-cost transfers without a central intermediary. PayPal shares have slumped 33% in the past 12 months, the sixth-worst performer on the Nasdaq 100 Index, as the pandemic-era surge in online payments abated.
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